Otis

At the 2020 census, 7,160 Americans bore the surname Otis — 4,789th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 41,700.

By the numbers

People: 7,160
Rank: 4,789th
How common: 1 in 41,700
Per 100,000: 2.4

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

A patronymic surname derived from Middle English genitive case of the Germanic given name Ote, Ode, cognate to modern Otto.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Otis described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 71.8%
Black, not Hispanic 18.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Otis

Elisha Otis (1811–1861)Founder of Otis Elevator Co.
Johnny Otis (1921–2012)American musical entertainer
Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814)American writer
Carré Otis (born 1968)American actress and model
James Otis (1725–1783)lawyer in colonial Massachusetts
Shuggie Otis (born 1953)American singer-songwriter, recording artist, and multi-instrumentalist

People named Otis with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Also a first name

Otis has been given to 61,969 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1920. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.